Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2018: Week 23

Slash Fiction is Like a Banquet is an essay written by Arduinna in early 1999 in response to a mailing list discussion about the rash of very similar, often very short, stories being posted at the time.

The central metaphor of the essay holds that the world of slash fandom is like a banquet to which we each bring a beloved dish...but once it becomes customary to bring lemon-garlic hummus from the store, everyone starts bringing the same thing, and as a result our feast is impoverished.

Some fans know it as "the hummus essay" due to the topic of hummus, as well its title on Sandy Herrold's site, Confessions of a Fannish Butterfly. On Sandy's site, the essay was called: "Slash is a banquet! (but all I can find is hummus)."